Pressure mounts on Ethics Committee to release Gaetz report

Pressure is building on the House Ethics Committee to release its findings on former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who President-elect Trump said he will nominate to be attorney general.

Such a move would be highly unusual, since the committee has no jurisdiction to investigate a former lawmaker, and does not typically release information on investigations after members depart the House.

But with Gaetz nominated to be the country’s attorney general, Democrats and some Republicans want to see what the committee found.

“I think there should not be any limitation on the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation, including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that would assess Gaetz’s nomination, told reporters on Wednesday. Cornyn added that he “absolutely” wanted to see the Ethics panel’s findings.

Gaetz’s abrupt resignation from the House on Wednesday came as the release of the Ethics Committee’s report was imminent, a source familiar with the matter told The Hill. The panel was scheduled to meet on Friday to vote on whether or not to release the report about Gaetz, the source said, as first reported by Punchbowl News.

While such a move is very rare, there is precedent for the committee releasing a report after a member resigned. In 1987, the committee released its report on former Rep. William Boner (D-Tenn.) after he resigned from the House.

Some senators are expecting that the upper chamber will get the report. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said that the report will “clearly become part of the record, even if it’s a secure record,” as the Senate Judiciary Committee considers the Gaetz nomination.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in a statement on Thursday called on the House Ethics panel to preserve and share its findings on Gaetz.

“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report. We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people,” Durbin said in the statement.

The committee has already broken from its normal posture once in the 118th Congress, when it released a report on former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) even though federal charges against him were unresolved. The Ethics Committee typically waits to take action until any ongoing legal proceedings have concluded, deferring to the Department of Justice. Santos later pleaded guilty to fraud charges.

The committee is comprised of five Republicans and five Democrats, and makes most of its decisions on simple majority votes. If Republicans on the panel do want to release the report on Gaetz, they must weigh their distaste for Gaetz against the risk of Trump’s wrath.

The committee was investigating whether Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other allegations. The congressional probe into Gaetz was opened in 2021, shortly after news reports emerged that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was reportedly investigating whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl.

Gaetz has vigorously denied allegations of wrongdoing, and the DOJ declined to charge him with a crime. In September, Gaetz said he would “no longer voluntarily participate” in the “nosy” Ethics probe and would not comply with its subpoena, accusing the panel of asking him for a list of adult women with whom he’d had sex over the last seven years.

John Clune, a lawyer reportedly representing the 17-year-old victim at the center of the most serious allegations, also called on the Ethics Committee to release its findings.

“Mr. Gaetz's likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events. We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses,” Clune said in a post on the social platform X.

Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) said the general opinion among GOP members is that Gaetz resigned in order to try to block the report from coming out.

“It’s very suspicious that he all of a sudden resigned because other members who are being nominated for posts have not resigned,” Murphy said. “I do know that if he continues to persist with this appointment, it will all come out.”

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), when announcing Gaetz’s resignation on Wednesday evening, said that Gaetz resigned in order to kick-start the process of replacing him, to lessen the impact of a slim House GOP majority. Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) has also been selected to be national security adviser, and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) was tapped to be U.N. ambassador.

Some of Gaetz’s former GOP House colleagues, though, think the report should come out, or at least be shared with the Senate.

“Senators have an important decision to make, and I think they should have all the information necessary to make the right decisions,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), adding if there is nothing that says the Ethics Committee can’t release the report, “it would be a good thing for them to know the facts.”

“If he’s gonna continue through that process [of becoming attorney general], I think the Ethics report needs to come out,” Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) said. “I just don’t want an attorney general who’s compromised with that kind of a report hanging out there that could be used to compromise him.”

But the idea of the Ethics Committee releasing findings on a nonmember is getting some pushback in the House, where members could be personally affected by that kind of precedent.

House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said the Ethics Committee should not release its findings.

“He’s no longer a member. It’s moot to me,” Rogers said. Asked if he think Gaetz is qualified to be attorney general, he said: “It's the president's decision.”

House Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) declined to comment on any potential Ethics Committee meetings, or to comment further on the Gaetz situation.

“With the confidentiality that surrounds the committee, I can't publicly address any potential meeting dates the committee might be taking up,” Guest told The Hill. “I can’t give you any information of any significance.”

House GOP leaders are staying out of the debate.

“I don't know if there is a report that's coming out. Obviously, there are reports about it, but the Ethics Committee doesn't share that information with the rest of the membership,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told The Hill.

Mychael Schnell and Al Weaver contributed.